Fear and Trembling Part 6

He stepped in at the morning-room window. The blinds were half down - he stooped his head to avoid them - and the room was in dark-yellow shadow. (He had waited here for them all to come in, that afternoon he arrived back from Ceylon.) The smell of pinks came in, and two or three bluebottles b.u.mbled and bounced on the ceiling. His sister Catherine sat with her back to him, playing the piano. (He had heard her as he came up the path.) He looked at her pink, pointed elbows - she was playing a waltz, and the music ran through them in jerky ripples.

"Hullo, Catherine!" he said, and listened in admiration. So his new voice sounded like this!

"Hullo, Terry!" She went on playing, worrying at the waltz. She had an anxious, methodical mind, but loved gossip. He thought, Here is a bit of gossip for you - Josephine's down in the chapel, covered with blood. Her dress is spoiled, but I think her blue beads are all right. I should go and see.

"I say, Catherine -"

"Oh, Terry, they're putting the furniture back in the drawing-room. I wish you'd go and help. It's getting those big sofas through the door - and the cabinets." She laughed, "I'm just putting the music away," and went on playing.

He thought, I don't suppose she'll be able to marry now. No one will marry her. He said, "Do you know where Josephine is?"

"No, I haven't" - rum-tum-tum, rum-tum-tum - "the slightest idea. Go on, Terry."

He thought, She never liked Josephine. He went away.

He stood in the door of the drawing-room. His brothers and Beatrice were punting the big armchairs, chintz-skirted, over the waxy floor. They all felt him there, for as long as possible didn't notice him. Charles - fifteen, with his pink, scrubbed ears - considered a moment, shoving against the cabinet, thought it was rather a shame, turned with an honest, kindly look of distaste, said, "Come on, Terry." He can't go back to school now, thought Terry, can't go anywhere, really. Wonder what they'll do with him - send him out to the Colonies? Charles had perfect manners: square, bluff, perfect. He never thought about anybody, never felt anybody - just cla.s.sified them. Josephine was "a girl staying in the house," "a friend of my sister's." He would think at once (in a moment when Terry had told him), A girl staying in the house - it's - well, I mean, if it hadn't been a girl staying in the house - Terry went over to him; they pushed the cabinet. But Terry pushed too hard, crooked; the farther corner grated against the wall. "Oh, I say, we've scratched the paint," said Charles. And indeed they had; on the wall was a gray scar. Charles went scarlet; he hated things to be done badly. It was nice of him to say, "We've scratched the paint." Would he say later, "We've killed Josephine?"

"I think perhaps you'd better help with the sofas," said Charles civilly.

"You should have seen the blood on my hands just now," said Terry.

"Bad luck!" Charles said quickly, and went away.

Beatrice, Josephine's friend, stood with her elbows on the mantelpiece looking at herself in the gla.s.s above. Last night a man had kissed her down in the chapel (Terry had watched them). This must seem to Beatrice to be written all over her face - what else could she be looking at? Her eyes in the looking-gla.s.s were dark, beseeching. As she saw Terry come up behind her she frowned angrily and turned away.

"I say, Beatrice, do you know what happened down in the chapel?"

"Does it interest you?" She stooped quickly and pulled down the sofa loose-cover where it had "runkled" up, as though the sofa legs were indecent.

"Beatrice, what would you do if I'd killed somebody?"

"Laugh," said she wearily.

"If I'd killed a woman?"

"Laugh harder. Do you know any women?"

She was a lovely thing, really; he'd ruined her, he supposed. He was all in a panic. "Beatrice, swear you won't go down to the chapel." Because she might, well - of course she'd go down. As soon as she was alone and they didn't notice, she'd go creeping down to the chapel. It had been that kind of kiss.

"Oh, be quiet about that old chapel!" Already he'd spoiled last night for her. How she hated him! He looked round for John. John had gone away.

On the hall table were two letters, come by the second post, waiting for Josephine. No one, he thought, ought to read them - he must protect Josephine; he took them up and slipped them into his pocket.

"I say," called John from the stairs, "what are you doing with those letters?" John didn't mean to be sharp, but they had taken each other unawares. They none of them wanted Terry to feel how his movements were sneaking movements; when they met him creeping about by himself they would either ignore him or say, "Where are you off to?" jocosely and loudly, to hide the fact of their knowing he didn't know. John was Terry's elder brother, but hated to sound like one. But he couldn't help knowing those letters were for Josephine, and Josephine was "staying in the house."

"I'm taking them for Josephine."

"Know where she is?"

"Yes, in the chapel - I killed her there."

But John - hating this business with Terry - had turned away. Terry followed him upstairs, repeating, "I killed her there, John - John, I've killed Josephine in the chapel." John hurried ahead, not listening, not turning round. "Oh yes," he called over his shoulder. "Right you are, take them along." He disappeared into the smoking room, banging the door. It had been John's idea that, from the day after Terry's return from Ceylon, the sideboard cupboard in the dining-room should be kept locked up. But he'd never said anything; oh no. What interest could the sideboard cupboard have for a brother of his? he pretended to think.

Oh yes, thought Terry, you're a fine man, with a muscular back, but you couldn't have done what I've done. There had, after all, been Something in Terry. He was abler than John (they'd soon know). John had never kissed Josephine.

Terry sat down on the stairs, saying, "Josephine, Josephine!" He sat there gripping a bal.u.s.ter, shaking with exaltation.

The study door panels had always looked solemn; they bulged with solemnity. Terry had to get past to his father; he chose the top left-hand panel to tap on. The patient voice said, "Come in!"

Here and now, thought Terry. He had a great audience; he looked at the books round the dark walls and thought of all those thinkers. His father jerked up a contracted, strained look at him. Terry felt that hacking with his news into this silence was like hacking into a great, grave chest. The desk was a havoc of papers.

"What exactly do you want?" said his father, rubbing the edge of the desk.

Terry stood there silently; everything ebbed. "I want," he said at last, "to talk about my future."

His father sighed and slid a hand forward, rumpling the papers. "I suppose, Terry," he said as gently as possible, "you really have got a future?" Then he reproached himself. "Well, sit down a minute - I'll just -"

Terry sat down. The clock on the mantelpiece echoed the ticking in his brain. He waited.

"Yes?" said his father.

"Well, there must be some kind of future for me, mustn't there?"

"Oh, certainly -"

"Look here, Father, I have something to show you. That African knife -"

"What about it?"

"That African knife. It's here. I've got it to show you."

"What about it?"

"Wait just a minute." He put a hand into either pocket; his father waited.

"It was here - I did have it. I brought it to show you. I must have it somewhere - that African knife."

But it wasn't there, he hadn't got it; he had lost it; left it, dropped it - on the gra.s.s, by the tank, anywhere. He remembered wiping it - Then?

Now his support was all gone; he was terrified now; he wept.

"I've lost it," he quavered, "I've lost it."

"What do you mean?" said his father, sitting blankly there like a tombstone, with his white, square face. "What are you trying to tell me?"

"Nothing," said Terry, weeping and shaking. "Nothing, nothing, nothing."

RAY BRADBURY.

THE JAR.

It was one of those things they keep in a jar in the tent of a sideshow on the outskirts of a little, drowsy town. One of those pale things drifting in alcohol plasma, forever dreaming and circling, with its peeled dead eyes staring out at you and never seeing you. It went with the noiselessness of late night, and only the crickets chirping, the frogs sobbing off in the moist swampland. One of those things in a big jar that makes your stomach jump like it does when you see an amputated arm in a laboratory vat.

Charlie stared back at it for a long time.

A long time, his big raw hands, hairy on the roofs of them, clenching the rope that kept back curious people. He had paid his dime and now he stared.

It was getting late. The merry-go-round drowsed down to a lazy mechanical tinkle. Tent peggers back of a canvas smoked and cursed over a poker game. Lights switched out, putting a summer gloom over the carnival. People streamed homeward in cliques and queues. Somewhere, a radio flared up, then cut, leaving Louisiana sky wide and silent with stars peppering it.

There was nothing in the world for Charlie but that pale thing sealed in its universe of serum. Charlie's loose mouth hung open in a pink weal, teeth showing, eyes puzzled, admiring, wondering.

Someone trotted in the shadows behind him, small beside Charlie's giant tallness. "Oh," said the shadow, coming into the light-bulb glare. "You still here, bud?"

"Yeah," said Charlie, irritated; his thoughts were touched.

The carny-boss appreciated Charlie's curiosity. He nodded at his old acquaintance in the jar. "Everybody likes it; in a peculiar kinda way, I mean."

Charlie rubbed his long jawbone. "You - uh - ever consider selling it?"

The carny-boss's eyes dilated, then closed. He snorted. "Naw. It brings customers. They like seeing stuff like that. Sure."

Charlie made a disappointed, "Oh."

"Well," consider the carny-boss, "if a guy had money, maybe -"

"How much money?"

"If a guy had -" the carny-boss estimated, squinting eyes, counting on fingers, watching Charlie as he tacked it out one finger after another. "If a guy had three, four, say, maybe seven or eight -"

Charlie nodded with each motion, expectantly. Seeing this, the carny-boss raised his total, " - maybe ten dollars, or maybe fifteen -"

Charlie scowled, worried. The carny-boss retreated, "Say a guy has twelve dollars -" Charlie grinned. "Why, he could buy that thing in that jar," concluded the carny-boss.

"Funny thing," said Charlie, "I got just twelve bucks in my denims. And I been reckoning how looked up to I'd be back down at Wilder's Hollow if I brung home something like this to set on my shelf over the table. The guys would sure look up to me than, I bet."

"Well, now, listen here -" said the carny-boss.

The sale was completed with the jar put on the back seat of Charlie's wagon. The horse skittered its hoofs when it saw it, and whinnied.

The carny-boss glanced up with an expression of, almost, relief. "I was tired of seeing the thing around. Don't thank me. Lately ,I been thinking things about it, funny things - don't mind me, I'm just a big-mouth. S'long, farmer!"

Charlie drove off. The naked blue light bulbs withdrew like dying stars, the open dark country night of Louisiana swept in around the wagon and horse. The bra.s.s merry-go-round clanking faded. There was just Charlie, the horse timing its gray hoofs, and the crickets.

And the jar behind the high seat.

It sloshed back and forth, back and forth. Sloshed wet. And the cold gray thing drowsily slumped against the gla.s.s, looking out, looking out, but seeing nothing, nothing, nothing.

Charlie leaned back to pet the lid. Smelling of strange liquor, his hand returned, changed and cold and trembling, excited. He was bright-scarlet happy about this. Yes, sir!

Slosh, slosh, slosh - In the Hollow numerous gra.s.s-green and blood-red lanterns tossed dusty light over men huddled, changing, spitting, sitting on General Store property.

They knew the creak-b.u.mble of Charlie's vehicle and did not s.h.i.+ft their raw, drab-haired skulls as he rocked to a halt. Their cigars were nicotine glowworms crawling from political lips to knee-perches and return-trip. Their voices were frog mutterings in summer night.

Charlie leaned at an eager angle. "Hi, Clem. Hi, Milt."

"Lo, Charlie. Lo, Charlie," they murmured. The political conflict continued. Charlie cut it down the seam.

"I got somethin' here. I got somethin' you might wanna see!"

Tom Carmody's eyes glinted, green in the lamplight, from the General Store porch. It seemed to Charlie that Tom Carmody was forever installed under porches in shadow, or under trees in shadow, or if in a room in the farthest niche, showing his eyes out at you from his dark. You never knew what his face was doing, and his eyes were always funning you. And every time they looked at you they laughed a different way.

"You ain't got nothin' we wants ta see, you dumb sheebaw!"

Charlie made a fist with a blunt-knuckle fringe. "Somethin' in a jar," he went on. "Looks kine a like a brain, kine a like a pickled wolf, kine a like - well come look yourself!"

Somebody snicked his cigar into a fall of pink ash and ambled over to look. Charlie grandly elevated the jar lid, and in the uncertain lantern light the man's face changed. "Hey, now, what in h.e.l.l is this -"

It was the first thaw of the night. Others s.h.i.+fted lazily upright, leaned forward; gravity pulled them into walking. They made no effort, except to keep one shoe before the other, to keep from collapsing upon their unusual faces. They circled the jar and contents. And Charlie, first time in his life, seized upon some strategy and clapped the lid down with a gla.s.s clatter.

"You want to see more, drop around to my house. It'll be there," he declared generously.

Tom Carmody spat from out his porch eyrie. "Ha!"

"Lemme see thet again," cried Gramps Medknowe. "Is it a brain?"

Charlie flapped the reins and the horse stumbled into action.

"Come on around! You're welcome!"

"What'll your wife say?"

"She'll kick the tar off our heels!"

But Charlie and the wagon were gone over the hill. They stood around, all of them, chewing tongues, squinting after. Tom Carmody swore softly from the porch - As Charlie climbed the steps of his shack, carrying the jar to its throne in the living-room, he thought that from now on the place would be a palace. The inc.u.mbent king swam without moving in his private pool, raised, elevated upon his shelf over the table. This jar was the one thing that dispelled the gray sameness that hung over the place on the swamp rim.

"What've you got there?"

Thedy's thin soprano turned him from his admiration. She stood in the bedroom door glaring out, her thin body clothed in faded blue gingham, her hair drawn to a drab knot behind red ears. Her eyes were faded like the gingham.

"Well," she repeated. "What is it?"